For whatever reason I got to thinking back and how I felt a little over a year ago. At the time I had almost no control of my hands which made my job (and just day to day activities) very hard. I guess the big thing then was fear and thus only a very select few knew I had MS – the fear seems silly to me now but it wasn’t at the time – of course this is speaking now that I am over that exacerbation. In fact I went to great lengths to keep it quiet and keep my disability hidden. On another level I was embarrassed about my inability to do things (write, type at any decent speed, dress, showering was very difficult, going to the bathroom was very difficult) and just gave me additional reason to keep it quiet. In fact I had to sign something for work and the HR rep. asked if I had carpel tunnel – I said it was something like that. (I figured it kinda was since that is a nerve disorder affecting the hands due to signal disruption – my nerve problem is just located somewhere else) Now the hands are all* better and I can’t imagine anyone not knowing about my MS at this point – obviously since I publicly blog about it! 😉 I can only hope if/when I have another really bad exacerbation I will handle it much better.

*My hands still get stiff for no apparent reason as well as when I get hot. My sense of touch is permanently changed and my handwriting is worse (and it was bad before). None of these things has any real impact on my life – except when I can’t read my handwriting (but that happened before 😉

One Response to “Thinking Back”

I don’t think it is fair to say that you handled “THE” exacerbation badly. We were both afraid, and everything was so new. I think we were just trying to hang on to the things that we knew. We were scared of what was happening, and hey, I think we did okay. I would call it survival, but by the Grace of God we made it through, and things are much better.